This commentary discusses three challenges for the promising and ambitious research agenda outlined in the volume. First, it interrogates the volume’s attempts to differentiate political communities ...
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This commentary discusses three challenges for the promising and ambitious research agenda outlined in the volume. First, it interrogates the volume’s attempts to differentiate political communities of legitimation, which may vary widely in composition, power, and relevance across institutions and geographies, with important implications not only for who matters, but also for what gets legitimated, and with what consequences. Second, it examines avenues to overcome possible trade-offs from gains in empirical tractability achieved through the volume’s focus on actor beliefs and strategies. One such trade-off is less attention to evolving norms and cultural factors that may underpin actors’ expectations about what legitimacy requires. Third, it addresses the challenge of theory building that can link legitimacy sources, (de)legitimation practices, audiences, and consequences of legitimacy across different types of institutions.Less

Challenges in the Empirical Study of Global Governance Legitimacy

Steven Bernstein

Published in print: 2018-09-27

This commentary discusses three challenges for the promising and ambitious research agenda outlined in the volume. First, it interrogates the volume’s attempts to differentiate political communities of legitimation, which may vary widely in composition, power, and relevance across institutions and geographies, with important implications not only for who matters, but also for what gets legitimated, and with what consequences. Second, it examines avenues to overcome possible trade-offs from gains in empirical tractability achieved through the volume’s focus on actor beliefs and strategies. One such trade-off is less attention to evolving norms and cultural factors that may underpin actors’ expectations about what legitimacy requires. Third, it addresses the challenge of theory building that can link legitimacy sources, (de)legitimation practices, audiences, and consequences of legitimacy across different types of institutions.

This chapter provides an analysis of state-centered and individualistic theories of legitimacy in PrIL and distinguishes them from the relational internationalist perspective. It shows that ...
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This chapter provides an analysis of state-centered and individualistic theories of legitimacy in PrIL and distinguishes them from the relational internationalist perspective. It shows that state-centered theories determined the legitimacy of applying one law or another within interstate relationships. Individualistic theories linked the legitimacy of the applicable law to particular dimensions of political affiliation. By contrast, this chapter shows how relational internationalist authors envisioned different dimensions of legitimacy from both the state-centered and the individualistic positions, by focusing on an interpersonal relationship, as opposed to an isolated individual, and on private law, as opposed to constitutional or public law generally. According to the relational internationalist perspective, the legitimacy of imposing one law over another is justified on different grounds, including by reference to the actions of the parties, their expectations, the values underlying private law relationships, and the embeddedness of a legal relationship within one or several communities.Less

Legitimacy and Autonomy

Roxana Banu

Published in print: 2018-07-26

This chapter provides an analysis of state-centered and individualistic theories of legitimacy in PrIL and distinguishes them from the relational internationalist perspective. It shows that state-centered theories determined the legitimacy of applying one law or another within interstate relationships. Individualistic theories linked the legitimacy of the applicable law to particular dimensions of political affiliation. By contrast, this chapter shows how relational internationalist authors envisioned different dimensions of legitimacy from both the state-centered and the individualistic positions, by focusing on an interpersonal relationship, as opposed to an isolated individual, and on private law, as opposed to constitutional or public law generally. According to the relational internationalist perspective, the legitimacy of imposing one law over another is justified on different grounds, including by reference to the actions of the parties, their expectations, the values underlying private law relationships, and the embeddedness of a legal relationship within one or several communities.